


Where DO you find these people?

by Aesoleucian



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-12 21:32:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 11,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Takashi isn't the only kid who was treated like crap because he could see youkai. And there's plenty of room in the Fujiwara house. Takashi gets a little sister.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> completely unedited, I wrote all of this this morning. let's see how far I can get. will try to update daily.

The ceremony is lovely. Touko is always happy to see two people getting married when they look like they’re as in love as the Sakamotos are. She gives them her warmest smile and her sincerest congratulations, and is halfway through asking them if they’ve decided which house to buy when she’s distracted by the steadily louder voices behind her. “Minami!” someone is calling. “Where have you run off to? Minami!”

“What’s going on?” Touko asks.

“My cousin has a girl named Minami,” says Sakamoto Ryuuji. “It sounds like she might be lost.”

The slow turn of casual conversation and congratulations has speeded up until it looks like a beehive, which Touko takes to mean that people are getting ready to look for Minami. “I’ll go and help them,” she says. “I hate to think of a little girl getting lost at a wedding.”

Eventually, Touko and another one of the bride’s distant relatives find her, deep in the forest. She’s curled at the base of a tree, crying, and she starts when Touko calls her name. She doesn’t look happy to see them, though. She looks afraid as she peers out from under her bangs. They’re so long they get in her eyes, as if they haven’t been cut in quite a while. “Minami-chan, we’re not going to hurt you,” says Touko. “We just came to find you. You gave your parents quite a scare, running off like that.”

“My parents?” murmurs Minami. “You mean my aunt and uncle?”

“You gave _everyone_ a scare,” says the bride’s cousin (Touko never got a chance to ask his name). “Come on home. Your aunt and uncle are worried sick.”

Touko offers her hand, and Minami grips it tightly. “Sorry about the trouble,” she mumbles. The phrase is painfully familiar.

“It’s all right,” Touko tells her. “We’re just glad you’re safe.”

Minami’s aunt and uncle don’t seem particularly glad to see her safe, though. Her aunt purses her lips and takes hold of Minami’s shoulder, and her uncle crosses his arms and says, “About time. We should go home.” Because Touko drifts after them, trying to decide whether to ask about Minami, she hears what he says next, too. “I told you not to embarrass us this time.”

“Sorry,” Minami mumbles. She looks smaller and more miserable than ever. Touko wants to take her away from them this instant and never give her back.

Touko would be the first to admit that she is perhaps a little nosy, but she’s proud if that’s her only vice. In this case, her nosiness is justified, she finds out from the other guests; Minami’s parents seem to be permanently on business overseas, and she’s staying with her mother’s sister until the unknown day when they come back. It’s a cruel thing to do to a child, it would have been far better to take her even if she had to learn a new language, but perhaps it can be explained by the other rumors she hears. What parent would want to bring a child with them who was that sick? A child who was a compulsive liar? A child who attracted trouble.

Touko’s blood is fairly boiling on the train ride home, because she’s heard all those things said about the sweetest boy she’s ever met. She makes a plan.


	2. Chapter 2

“Hello, Minami-chan, are your aunt and uncle home?”

Minami looks up at her with a clear but strangely blank expression. “You’re Touko-san.”

Touko smiles at her. “I’m glad I made such an impression. How are you doing? You didn’t get hurt in the forest, did you?”

Minami shakes her head, all but hiding behind the doorframe.

“Can you get your aunt for me? I came to see her and have tea.  Of course, I’m happy to see you as well.”

But Sakamoto Kaoru is already coming up behind her, putting her hand on Minami’s shoulder again. It looks less like a comfort than a restraint. “Hello, Fujiwara-san. I’m sorry about Minami, she’s a little slow. Please come in.”

“She’s a lovely girl,” Touko protests, but Kaoru doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Go and play outside,” Kaoru tells Minami. “We’re having grown-up teatime.”

Touko looks after the girl, frowning worriedly, as Minami walks solemnly away. “How old is she?”

“About nine. We’ve had her for a couple years, now. Honestly, I don’t think her parents wanted her. But we can’t exactly turn her away. She doesn’t have any other relatives.”

Touko changes the subject, feeling guilty. She wants to argue more, wants to make Kaoru understand that Minami just needs to be treated as a child rather than an inconvenience, but in the end there’s nothing she can do about it yet. She manages to forget for a while as she’s talking to Kaoru, because no mention is made of the girl as she’s describing the fortunes of the family. Touko is in a good mood as she says goodbye, until she steps out into the garden and sees Minami curled into a tiny ball under a flowering bush, reading a book.

“Good-bye, Minami-chan,” she says. “I’m leaving now, but I hope I’ll be back soon to come and see you.”

Minami looks up, just enough so that her eyes are visible over the top of the book. She’ll ruin her eyesight if she always reads so close to her face. “Come and see _me_?”

“Yes. What are you reading?”

Minami stares at her for slightly too long, and then says, “It’s about a boy who goes to a new school. It’s from the library.”

“Do you like it?”

Minami shrugs, and looks back down at the book, which Touko takes to mean she’s interrupting.

“Sorry to take you away from it, then,” she says, smiling. Even if Minami can’t see her smile, she’ll hear it in her voice. “Good-bye. I’ll see you soon.”

Minami doesn’t reply, so Touko walks out of the gate and toward the train station.

The whole way, she’s thinking hard. Perhaps she doesn’t put as much thought into things as Shigeru, but her mind is already made up. She has no doubts or reservations about the question she wants to ask him.


	3. Chapter 3

Touko waits until Takashi has gone up to his room, which is a sign that what she wants to talk about is serious. Shigeru looks at her curiously as she frowns at her hands, getting ready to talk.

“Well,” she begins, “I may have done something rather silly, Shigeru-san. I promised myself something without asking you first.”

It must be a big promise, then. “I can’t think of anything I’d want to deny you, Touko-san.”

She takes a deep breath. “At my cousin’s wedding there was a bit of a commotion about a girl who had gone missing. Everyone went looking for her and I found her in the forest. She was so scared! And her aunt and uncle, who she’s staying with…” She pauses as if she’s trying to gather her words, but Shigeru understands know where it’s going.

“One child wasn’t enough for you, Touko-san?” he says, smiling gently as she turns a worried expression on him. “She’s not being treated well?”

“She’s not. You should hear the things people were saying about her! Nine years old and already they’re calling her a liar, and worse things. Her aunt told me she was _slow_ , when she was standing right there, as if she couldn’t hear! I don’t know why people don’t treat children with the kindness they deserve, Shigeru-san, I really don’t.”

She looks as upset as he’s ever seen her, and he knows the very feeling. He puts his arm around her shoulders and holds her. She leans into him and sighs, releasing her tension now that she knows it’s shared. After a moment he says, “I’m willing to try. I want to meet her. I wonder what Takashi-kun would think about it.”

“I never know what that boy is thinking,” Touko murmurs, but she’s smiling. “Don’t you think it would be good for him to have a sister?”

“Perhaps it would,” says Shigeru. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

 

The next day he catches Takashi before he leaves for school. “Just a moment, Takashi-kun.”

Takashi turns and gives him a questioning look.

“Touko-san and I were… Hm, well, we were thinking of adopting another child.” Takashi’s eyes widen slightly, which is just about the most surprised he ever looks. “That’s certainly not to say you aren’t enough for us! But this girl isn’t in a good situation.”

“You want to help her like you helped me,” says Takashi. Surprised, Shigeru nods. “How can I say no to that?”

“Well! I’m glad you feel that way. We’re going to visit her this weekend, and if you’d like to come along and meet her…”

“I’d like that very much, Shigeru-san,” says Takashi. He smiles, one of those wide sudden smiles that don’t seem quite right. “I have to get to school now.”

Takashi doesn’t seem _entirely_ enthusiastic, but they did spring it on him very suddenly. He’s certainly never had a little sister before, for all that he may have lived in houses with younger children. “Have a good day at school,” Shigeru tells him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes I just cannot contain how much I love everyone in the Fujiwara-Natsume family


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takashi reflects on his neglectful past, and has no idea how to talk to children who aren't secretly ayakashi...

Takashi spends the whole train ride worrying, missing Nyanko-sensei’s familiar weight in his arms. If he has a chance to help someone escape the kind of loneliness he suffered, he has to. He _wants_ to. But he can’t help but feel that he already puts Touko and Shigeru in enough danger just by living with them. Is it worse for nine-year-old Minami to be neglected by her aunt and uncle, or is it worse for her life to be in danger from youkai?

The two seem equally dangerous up until he actually meets her. The first he sees of her, she’s peeking out of a door down the hall, barely visible behind her aunt and uncle. It seems like she’s not supposed to show herself around guests or talk to them, which was a rule Takashi had to follow at several of the places he stayed. After he was told enough times, he started assuming that he should hide whenever anyone had guests.

So he excuses himself from tea and goes to find Minami. She’s in a room at the back of the house, with the door open to the back porch, reading. He hesitates in the doorway, unsure how to talk to little girls, but he doesn’t get much time to think it over. She looks up quickly and just stares at him. He stares at her. Finally he just defaults to ‘polite and friendly,’ since that is always a safe bet. “Hello,” he says. “I’m Natsume Takashi. I live with Touko-san and Shigeru-san. They wanted me to meet you.”

Minami continues to stare. “Why?”

“Um, they’re hoping they can adopt you. So you would be like my little sister.” Internally, he panics. That was way too blunt. He doesn’t know of a polite way to say something like that. It sounds so presumptuous!

“I’m Ueda Minami,” she says. She marks her place in her book and stands up, stretching out her hand. It’s strangely formal, but he takes it anyway.

“Nice to meet you.” Then he falls silent, not knowing what to say. The only times he’s ever talked to children her age was when they were bullying him,  aside from Kai, who turned out to be a god anyway. He has no model at all for how nine-year-olds are supposed to act, but he’s not really sure she does either. After a silence that goes on for too long he says, “May I sit with you?”

She nods, and he sits down about a meter away. He can’t think of anything to say, so he looks out into the back garden. It’s probably better than awkwardly making small talk. If someone tried to make small talk with him when he was nine, he probably would have just answered questions with “I don’t know” and agreed with all their statements until they got nervous and left.

After a while he hears another page turn. She’s gone back to reading. He relaxes a little bit, and tries to enjoy the garden. One of the Sakamotos must like to garden as a hobby, because it’s very beautiful and nicely laid-out. A tiny ayakashi pokes its head out from a hole in the bottom of the wall, and a line of small shadowy figures in insect-like masks starts to cross the garden. He smiles at them, trying to figure out what each of them is supposed to be. That one is a mantis, that one must be a cockroach, that one is a centipede—or maybe an earwig? He leans out from the wall and tries to shift closer to the porch casually, so as not to disturb them, but then Minami looks up from her book.

Embarrassed, he stops moving and tries to pretend he was admiring the flowers. When he looks over at her, she looks afraid… staring out into the garden. “What are they?” she whispers.

“Minor insect ayakashi,” he says. If she _can’t_ see them, he can just pretend he was playing make-believe with her. It’s a luxury he doesn’t have when talking to adults. His stomach twists.

“What?”

“Um, nothing.”

“Can you _see_ them?”

He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “The little spirits with insect masks? I can see them.”

Tears fill her eyes. Just as he would have been unspeakably relieved to find someone who understood, she feels the same way. “I’m not crazy,” she says.

“You’re not crazy.”

To his surprise, she stands up and throws herself at him, clutching his arm and burying her face in his shoulder. “I’m not crazy!” she says, muffled. “I’m not, I’m not, they’re real.”

He puts his hand on her head, and feels a little like crying, himself. “Yeah. They’re real.”


	5. Chapter 5

Takashi and Minami seem to have bonded very quickly. When Touko and Shigeru finished talking to the Sakamotos that first time last month, and came to find him, she was sleeping on his lap. Touko can’t forget the wondering smile he gave her when he looked up. Now Minami is pressed tight against his side, almost sitting on his seat, staring very intently out the opposite window of the train.  She holds his hand the whole walk home, and Touko has to hide a smile behind her hand as he offers for the second time to carry her and she stubbornly refuses. It seems that little Minami is rather insistent about being able to stand on her own two feet, as long as she gets to stand next to Takashi.

Takashi steps into the house one step ahead of her, just so he can say, “Welcome home.” She screws up her face and then scrubs her sleeve across it before she lets him pull her over the threshold.

“It’s really pretty,” she says. “And big.”

“We weren’t sure which room you would want,” Shigeru begins, closing the door behind them and starting to take off his shoes. Before he can finish his sentence, though, Minami says,

“I want to be by Takashi-san.” She looks up at Takashi, who has a bemused expression, and then corrects herself: “I want to be by onii-chan.”

To spare Takashi from having to respond (he looks just a little bit tearful, and that’s when Touko _knows_ it was a good decision to take Minami in) she takes Minami’s hand and leads her upstairs. “This is where Takashi-kun lives. Here’s his cat!” Nyankichi opens one eye to look at them from his cushion, and then turns his head away pointedly. Touko smiles at him, then turns to open the door right across the hallway. “And this is your room, if you want.”

Minami looks all around, but doesn’t go in. After a moment she nods. “Thank you, Touko-san. Thank you, everyone.”

Takashi, who is holding her single item of luggage, places it just inside the door.

“Well, we’ll leave you to get unpacked,” says Shigeru.

“I’ve got to start on dinner!” Touko adds. “Call us if you need anything, all right, Minami-chan?”

She nods again. “Yes, thank you, Touko-san.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takashi finally has an excuse to regularly cuddle with someone! it's for minami's comfort guys it's not like he's touch starved or anything


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more fluff

She looks after Touko-san and Shigeru-san as they go down the stairs, and then quickly looks around to make sure her new brother hasn’t disappeared too. He hasn’t. He’s sitting in the doorway of his room, petting the fat calico cat. Instead of purring, it’s sort of humming. “What’s its name?”

“I call him Nyanko-sensei,” says Takashi-onii-chan. “He’s my bodyguard.”

“Really?” He doesn’t _look_ like a very good bodyguard. But it would be rude if she said that, so she doesn’t. “Can I pet him?”

“What do you think, Nyanko-sensei?” says Takashi-onii-chan, looking down at the cat on his lap. “You can talk if you want. Minami can see ayakashi, too.”

“Oho?” says the cat, looking up at her. “Where do you find these people, Natsume?”

“I think she’s related to one of Touko-san’s relatives. But it’s rude to talk about her like she’s not here.”

Nobody has ever said it was rude before. Minami was kind of starting to believe it was supposed to be like that, just for her. “Nice to meet you, Nyanko-sensei,” she says. She holds out her hand, because cats are supposed to like to sniff people’s hands, but Nyanko-sensei puts his paw on it instead like he’s shaking her hand.

“You’ll do,” he says. “Just don’t get in my way. Hmph! More humans. It’s just a lot of trouble.” He jumps out of Takashi-onii-chan’s lap and waddles toward the stairs. He’s so fat that it looks kind of funny, but it’s still rude to laugh, so she puts her hands over her mouth.

“I think he likes you,” says Takashi-onii-chan. “He’s always like that.” He smiles at her, and something warm happens in her chest that she can’t remember ever feeling before. She sits down hard next to him and leans into his shoulder, and he puts his arm around her. “I know a lot of local ayakashi,” he says. “You’ll meet them all eventually, I think—you won’t be able to avoid it—but I want to keep them away from you while you’re still adjusting.”

She nods, and then is quiet for a while, while she tries to figure out how to ask her question. “Do you have any human friends?” she asks eventually. “Besides Touko-san and Shigeru-san?”

He makes a noise that might be either a cough or a laugh, and she’s worried she offended up. But when she looks up he’s smiling. “I do, yes. If we walk home from school together tomorrow you’ll get to meet some of them. Do you want to do that?”

“YES!” she says, and then covers her mouth again because she accidentally said it way too loud. Takashi-onii-chan laughs, and the warm feeling gets bigger. She’s never made someone laugh before. Not in a nice way.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THEY'RE HERE

Takashi takes Minami to her new elementary school the next day, and then spends the walk to his own school worrying about whether she’ll be able to make friends easily and whether she’ll have a good time at school. He was able to _this_ time, but that’s probably more due to the unique virtues of Nishimura and Kitamoto than anything about him. And Minami doesn’t have as much practice changing schools as he does. She’ll be fine, he tells himself, because at least she has him and the Fujiwaras…

He’s so distracted that he accidentally runs into an enormous ayakashi, which gets angry and starts threatening to eat him—and so he has to take the long route to school to shake it off. Consequently, he arrives at his classroom ten minutes late and out of breath. But his teacher is used to it, and he thinks the other students in class 2A are, too, so it isn’t too bad, even though he hates standing out. A few people mutter something to their neighbors, but he makes it to his seat by the window without incident.

“What gives?” whispers Nishimura behind him.

“I’ll tell you later,” Takashi murmurs.

When class gets out Nishimura immediately asks again, as if he’s been thinking about it for the whole period instead of paying attention. This is exactly why he has to go to cram school. His grades are still better than Takashi’s, though.

“I had to walk Minami to school,” he answers, hoping that if he uses a casual enough tone Nishimura won’t realize he doesn’t know anyone named Minami.

“Natsume! You fox! Did you get a girlfriend over the weekend?”

Takashi looks away, face warm. “No. The Fujiwaras adopted a girl named Minami.”

“Whaaaat? How did you keep this a secret? You don’t just adopt people overnight! Wait, _do_ you?” Instead of waiting for an answer he waves and yells along the hallway. “HEY, KITAMOTO! YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO NATSUME THIS WEEKEND!”

“Keep it down, would you?” he hisses to Nishimura, embarrassed. “You can wait three minutes until we get outside, can’t you?”

Nishimura just laughs and slings his arm around Takashi’s shoulders, and he can’t be angry at someone who touches him so willingly. He just gives in and lets Nishimura steer him up the stairs and out onto the roof.

“Well, what is it?” asks Kitamoto as he follows them out the door. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you this excited before. And that’s really saying something, Nishimura.”

“Natsume’s got a little sister now! Just out of nowhere! Secret little sister!”

“Huh? Natsume, is that true?”

Takashi nods, strangely grateful that Nishimura is already calling her his sister. He _wants_ her to be, but for him it’s going to take a while to get used to. He’s never had a sibling. None of the other children in his various foster houses really count, although once in a while he felt like Kazuhiko from the very last one could have been…

“We’ll have to come over and meet her!” Nishimura is saying. “Hey, maybe she’ll be friends with your baby sister, Kitamoto!”

“You should wait a while,” Takashi murmurs, almost hoping they won’t hear him. “She needs to adjust to living in a new house first.”

“Yeah, yeah, just tell us when she’s adjusted! I wanna see what kind of little sister Natsume has! Is she as weird as you?”

“Don’t call her weird,” he snaps, and immediately regrets it as Nishimura draws back in surprise. He clears all expression from his face, trying not to look intimidating in any way. “She’s going to have a hard enough time adjusting. I don’t want anyone to spread rumors about her.” He knows he’s misinterpreting Nishimura’s words, but he can’t really stop himself. He feels like he’s already failed at being a good brother.

“You’re gonna be a great brother,” Kitamoto tells him. “You’ve already got the protectiveness down pat!”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minami has a panic attack for no especially good reason ::(

Classes were pretty good—at least Minami understands what’s going on, since she didn’t have much else to do except study at the Sakamotos’. Everyone was really friendly, but she can’t help but feel like they won’t stay that way. In her last school people stopped being nice around the third week when she tried to hide behind one of her friends and couldn’t stop crying long enough to explain why she was so scared. It still hurts when she thinks about it, so she tries not to. Instead she thinks about why Takashi-onii-chan is late, and starts to worry he isn’t coming. According to the clock on the front of the school he’s three minutes late. He probably forgot, since he doesn’t usually have to pick someone else up from school. He’s five minutes late. She tries to disappear into the wall as other kids pass by. Now he’s eight minutes late. He’s not coming. And she doesn’t remember how to get back to the Fujiwaras’ house on her own.

When he comes, twelve minutes late, she doesn’t see him, because she’s buried her face in her knees. She hears him, though. “Minami? Are you all right?”

She looks up, and a Takashi-colored blur is standing a little ways away. She rubs her eyes quickly so she can see him and make sure he’s not an ayakashi. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I thought you weren’t coming.” She’s not going to accuse him of being late. He might get mad.

“I’m sorry, I got here as fast as I could.” He crouches down next to her and reaches out a hand. “I only got out of class about fifteen minutes ago, and I had to find my friends, since they wanted to meet you.”

 _Oh_. Takashi-onii-chan didn’t say he’d come get her at 1530, he said his school got out at 1530. She really is slow, like Kaoru-san always said. But she’s got to stop crying so she won’t embarrass him. She’s already embarrassed him, and in front of his friends, too. “Sorry,” she says again. And she takes his hand so she can stand up, leans into his side. She doesn’t want to look at his friends. They’re probably mad at her.

“Aww, sweetie pie,” says a girl’s voice. “It’s all right! Scheduling is really confusing. It took me about two weeks to always make my classes on time once I got into high school. Actually, that happened in middle school, too.” The girl laughs, and Minami dares to look up at her. She has light-colored hair like Takashi-onii-chan, and she looks really happy and nice. “You’re Minami, right? You can call me Tooru if you want.”

“Nice to meet you,” Minami mumbles, and sticks out her free hand. Tooru-san takes it and smiles at her, and she’s confused. It’s less confusing if she reminds herself Tooru-san probably won’t want to smile at her for very long.

“And this is Tanuma,” says Takashi-onii-chan. Next to Tooru-san there’s a really tall boy with fluffy hair. Minami tells him “Nice to meet you,” too. He’s a little bit scary, even though he smiles at her. “Tanuma and Taki… well, they can’t really see ayakashi, but they’ve helped me out a lot in dealing with them.”

“Mhm,” says Minami, to show she’s listening. Except she’s not, really, and she feels bad about lying, but she’s tired and she wants to go back to a room that’s only hers, or maybe go to Takashi-onii-chan’s room and sit with him. Unless that’s selfish and she’d just distract him. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know anything, any of the rules here, and she hates it. “Is it okay if we go home,” she whispers.

“Of course,” says Takashi-onii-chan. “Taki, Tanuma, I think you should come back later. Minami doesn’t seem to be feeling well.”

“Sorry,” Minami says again. Now he can’t hang out with his friends because he has to take care of her. “I’ll learn how to get back on my own soon.”

“It’s not an inconvenience for me,” he says. She glances up at him, and he doesn’t really look happy _or_ sad _or_ angry. Just sort of blank. So maybe he is angry. She just needs to try harder to figure out how to make it easier for him. So when they get back to the house ( _back home_ ) she doesn’t ask to stay with him in his room.

But he asks. “Minami, do you want to sit with me? I won’t be very good company, since I have to do homework, but it might be better than being alone.”

She nods really fast, and tries not to cry again. Eventually she falls asleep curled up by his half-open closet door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "wait you mean my coping mechanisms are BAD.... when other people do them?"

“Touko-san, can I talk to you?”

“Always, Takashi-kun! What is it?”

He envies Touko for having something to do with her hands. He feels awkward and restless just standing there and watching her cook, but she never seems to want his help. “I’m a little worried about Minami,” he admits, eventually. “She seems too worried about offending me or being an inconvenience. It keeps making her really upset.”

Touko turns and gives him a strange look that he can’t interpret, and shakes her head. “She’s been in a situation a little like yours, hasn’t she, Takashi-kun? I imagine you understand what she’s thinking a lot better than we do.” Like a bell struck somewhere inside his mind, he understands what she’s telling him. In her gentle, roundabout way, she is saying she wishes _he_ would stop worrying about the same things. He barely hears her say, “Of course, we’ll do anything we can to support you both! I just don’t quite know what the right thing to do is…”

“Thank you, Touko-san,” he says distantly, and leaves the kitchen. He knows that words alone couldn’t possibly change his mind, but slowly the actions of others have proved to him that they truly do care for him. It will take a long time, but he can show Minami, too. Maybe words are the first step. He can’t remember if he ever believed the Fujiwaras when they told him last year to ask for anything he wanted.

When he gets upstairs Minami is in his room, as she usually is. She hardly uses her own even for sleeping, and Takashi hasn’t wanted to ask her to leave unless he’s expecting an ayakashi to visit during the night. Not that they don’t visit unexpectedly all the time. He’s a little worried whether she’s getting enough sleep.

“Onii-chan!” she says. “You’re back!”

“I’m back,” he replies, smiling at her. Right now she seems so carefree, he almost doesn’t want to start talking about something serious. But he has to. He just has to figure out how to approach it from the side. “What did you do while I was gone?”

“Homework mostly. I read two chapters of my new book. And now I’m drawing Nyanko-sensei.”

“It’s very good.” He turns his head sideways to get a better view. “I think you got his expression just right.” She beams at him, and then looks back down to keep coloring in the black patch on Nyanko-sensei’s back. “I wanted to talk about last week,” he says. Her crayon stills, and then she starts coloring again, very carefully. She’s expecting him to be angry at her. “It seems like sometimes you get… too scared about making people angry. More than you need to be. I know I did, when I was your age.” He still does, but that wouldn’t make him a very good role model. “But you don’t need to worry about being an inconvenience. By adopting you, me and the Fujiwaras agreed to help you whenever you need it. It makes us happier if you tell us when you need help. We like to feel useful. So don’t hesitate if you need something, even if… if it seems…” He chokes on the words _like it’s too much_ , and they come out as a broken whisper. He puts his hand over his mouth to stifle the quiet noise of his sobs, but he knows she can hear them anyway. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I still… can’t believe it’s real…” He sniffs, feeling childish, but the alternative is dripping snot on himself.

At nine years old, Takashi would have been paralyzed by someone else’s tears, would have had no idea what to do. Minami is smarter than him already. She puts down her crayon and crawls into his arms, and he feels her tears hot and damp on his shirt. “You’re good,” she says into his elbow. It hardly means anything at all, but no other compliment has ever affected him so profoundly. “You’re _good_ ,” she says again.

“You’re good too, Minami.” He strokes her hair, like he always wished someone would do for him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nyanko-sensei trying to pretend he doesn't feel the love emotion once again. also hinoe is there

It’s maybe a week after that when the Dogs Circle shows up at his window once again. “Natsume-samaaaa,” the cyclops calls. Minami jumps and clutches at Takashi’s side. “We have sakeeeeee.”

“Sorry about this, Minami,” says Takashi. “Sometimes they show up to drink in my room. I’ll just tell them to go.” The chuukyuu are already climbing inside, so he tells them, “Shoo. Get out of here. Some of us need to sleep.”

The bull pauses, halfway in the window, to give him a mournful expression, and then continues what he was doing. “Don’t be like that, Natsume-sama,” says the cyclops. “It’s new moon tonight! We’ve got to have somewhere bright to drink!”

Hinoe comes in before Takashi can reply. “Something smells off about your house, Natsume. Oh! You made a friend! Or… did you have a child?”

He wraps an arm around Minami, and checks to make sure she’s not too scared. But the anxiety of meeting new people doesn’t really apply to youkai; she’s looking solemnly at Hinoe like she’s thinking of telling her off.

“No,” he says. “This is my new sister.”

“Ueda Minami!” she adds. “Onii-chan, why are you Natsume- _sama_?”

Hinoe smiles, slightly wider than a human face would allow, as she steps aside for Chobihige to come in. “Natsume has something that allows him to crush our enemies for us, so these idiots like to suck up to him.”

“I _don’t_ crush anyone, though,” Takashi says quickly. “Also, you need to leave. Minami needs plenty of sleep so she can do well in school.”

“And you don’t?” asks Hinoe, sly.

Unwilling to admit that he just doesn’t care about his own grades as much as making sure Minami is healthy, he just tells them, “Get out!” again.

Last but not least, Nyanko-sensei jumps onto the windowsill, somehow managing to balance a bottle of sake on his head. “Sensei!” says Takashi. “Make them leave. This kind of party isn’t suitable for Minami.”

Nyanko-sensei eyes her, and then sighs. “All right, pack it up. We can’t have human children getting ideas.” When the ayakashi start to protest he says, “I _will_ eat you, don’t test me!”

Grumbling, they start to file out again. Hinoe is the only one with enough manners, or maybe enough guile, to introduce herself directly to Minami. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Ueda-chan. Normally your brother is a very tolerant host.” She laughs. “I’m Hinoe.”

Minami extends a hand, and Hinoe takes it, looking bemused. “Nice to meet you.”

“Perhaps I’ll come and see you later.” Then Hinoe leaps out the window, leaving the room quiet and relatively empty once again.

“Thanks for chasing them away, Nyanko-sensei,” says Minami, peeling herself away from Takashi’s side to pet him.

He squints his eyes closed in pleasure. “Hmph! You owe me, Natsume. That was going to be a good party.”

Takashi just yawns and doesn’t reply. Nyanko-sensei will do anything to avoid admitting that he cares about Minami as much as the rest of the family does, so Takashi will just leave him to it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Takashi gives Minami his hyperspecific anxiety disorder like a cherished inheritance

It’s been a month, and most people at school don’t hate Minami yet. She doesn’t have any close friends, but she has people who want to say hello to her every morning, people who smile at her when she says hello back. That’s about all she can deal with right now. Takashi-onii-chan has so many friends he wants her to meet, and ayakashi keep coming to the Fujiwaras’ house to get their names returned (she still doesn’t know why Takashi-onii-chan has their names in the first place), and she still has to do her schoolwork.

She’s also been working on lying.

The Sakamotos kept telling her that lying was bad, but they couldn’t tell the difference between truth and lies. When she asked Takashi-onii-chan, he said lying is bad but sometimes you have to do it to protect people from ayakashi. She’s not really sure _how_ it protects them, but Takashi-onii-chan knows a lot so he must have a good reason, and she’s just not smart enough to get it. So, if she acts like she can’t see them, everyone around her will be safer. Every time she sees an ayakashi she practices looking all the way through it, and blinking, and looking away. It’s hard when it’s a scary one, though. Sometimes they peek in the windows of her classroom and she jumps a little and has to try hard not to make a noise. If she just always keeps her hand over her mouth, it saves time.

Once, Rise-chan asked her why she does it. She kind of panicked and said, “It’s just something I do when I’m thinking!” But nobody seems to think it’s _too_ weird.

Takashi-onii-chan’s friends don’t think she’s weird. She’s not great at telling, but she thinks they like her. Sometimes Tooru-san lets Minami sit on her lap, and Tanuma-san let her help make curry, and he talks in a quiet voice. She also likes them because they make Takashi-onii-chan smile. Still, it’s hard to get used to having so many big brothers and sisters, along with having sort-of-parents now. Touko-san and Shigeru-san are way too nice and they always ask if she needs anything else, even when they’re already giving her more than she knows what to do with. She can actually get hugs almost whenever she wants now! She makes sure to use her power sparingly, in case there’s a limit.

She’s also learning from Takashi-onii-chan how to deal with ayakashi. He says she has pretty strong spiritual power, so if they’re bothering her she can just punch them and run away. He’s _very_ good at running. Maybe someday she’ll be as good as him, but right now she gets out of breath way too quickly. She’s only had to punch an ayakashi once: one time when she was waiting after school for Takashi-onii-chan and a monkey in a mask started asking if she wanted to come live in the forest. She was really scared and she started crying, but when it tried to grab her she punched it so hard its mask cracked, and then ran as fast as she could toward the high school. Takashi onii-chan was with his no-ayakashi human friends, so she couldn’t tell him exactly what happened, but he said he was proud of her anyway. And Kitamoto-san and Nishimura-san smiled at her and Kitamoto-san said it was good for her to learn to beat up creepy people early.

So basically it’s really good here. And she’s starting to get used to it, even. Except that there’s one creepy person even Takashi-onii-chan can’t beat up, a tall man with long hair and only one eye. He was waiting by the gate of their house when they came back from school, and he smiled a nice smile at Takashi-onii-chan. But Takashi-onii-chan wasn’t happy to see him, and he pulled Minami close to his side and said, “What do you want?”

“I thought I’d deliver my letter in person this time, since last time you managed to lose it. Who’s this?”

“I’m taking care of her for a friend who’s out of town,” Takashi-onii-chan said. His voice went hard and cold and he looked like he _wanted_ to punch the one-eyed man. But he didn’t. He just said, “You’ve delivered your letter. I’ll read it later. Now please leave.”

And he did leave. Thank goodness.

Except.

Now Takashi-onii-chan is missing. He disappeared out of his bed in the middle of the night. And she can’t tell anyone, because _lying keeps people safe_.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which madara is the only helpful spirit in the entire country

She leaves a note for Touko-san saying she’s going on a walk, like Takashi-onii-chan does a lot of the time. Touko-san is home, but Minami’s afraid that if she asks Touko-san will say no. So she opens the door very quietly and goes out, wishing for Nyanko-sensei to be here. She _thinks_ she can remember the way to Yatsuhara, but she’s only gone there twice, to Tanuma-san’s house.

She does make it, in the end, but it takes hours, and it’s starting to get really hot by the time she gets to the temple. But she doesn’t go in. She goes around the edge of the garden, staying in the trees, until she passes the old temple buildings that aren’t used any more and gets to the little shrine she went to once. “Chuukyuu-san?” she calls out quietly. “Hinoe-san?”

An ayakashi she doesn’t know pokes its head out of a bush. “Hey, a human’s here!” A few more ayakashi come to look at her. She feels a little bit like a deer they’re trying not to scare away.

“Do any of you know where Hinoe-san is?” she asks. “She’s tall and she has a pipe and a pretty hair clip.”

“You can see us?” says one of the ayakashi, one with a cat’s head. It doesn’t sound surprised. More… hungry.

“I can do more than see you,” she says. _Stay brave. You can bluff them_. “I can kick your butts. My big brother is Natsume Takashi and I’m almost as strong as he is!” A wave of his name, _Natsume_ , goes around the ayakashi. She lets it be a dramatic pause, like she’s seen Nishimura-san do, and then she says, “So tell me where Hinoe-san is, and you won’t get hurt.”

The cat-head ayakashi laughs nervously and says, “I heard she was down by the river, fishing.”

“Are you lying?” asks Minami. Sometimes youkai lie, she knows.

“He’s lying,” says a little ayakashi on a tree branch. It looks like it’s made of mochi, with a tiny mask that has a sun glyph on it. “She’s not even here today.”

“She is!” yells another ayakashi. “I saw her just after sunrise!”

They all start arguing, and maybe _all_ of them are lying, so Minami says, “Be quiet!” They actually _do_. She’s never felt more powerful. “Have you seen Nyanko-sensei, then?”

“Who?”

“He’s a fat manekineko who turns into a huge… a really big… with a long, long tail. He really likes sake.”

“Oh, _Madara_ ,” mutters the cat-head ayakashi. “He’s at that Nanatsujiya place he never shuts up about.”

All the ayakashi seem to agree on this, and Minami actually does know how to get there, so she thanks them and turns back. She kind of wants to cry. She came all this way and now she has to go halfway back home.

But she’s lucky today. She runs into Nyanko-sensei just a little bit after the bridge to Yatsuhara. “Nyanko-sensei!” she shouts. “You have to help! Onii-chan is missing!”

“Hmm?” he says.

“He disappeared last night. You should have been there to watch him!”

Nyanko-sensei narrows his eyes. It makes it look like he’s smiling, or he doesn’t care at all. “He’s probably on a walk.”

“He’s not! A creepy guy with one eye came and gave him a letter, and then he disappeared! I think he was cursed! Or kidnapped!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” She doesn’t get a chance to ask what that means, because he poofs into a cloud of smoke and turns into his huge self with the long tail and says, “Get on. I’m going to see if I can smell him out. If not, I know someone who can track him.”

She doesn’t get to ride on his back very often. She climbs up and takes handfuls of thick white fur and puts her nose in the fur on his back. He doesn’t smell like any real animal. Instead he has a special ayakashi smell.

“Hold on,” he says, and leaps into the sky.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have let myself write more Matoba, he's so fun. I just dunno if I have enough menace in my heart to portray him faithfully.

Shuuichi wakes to an insistent noise that he barely recognizes as his door-call buzzer. Nobody ever uses it, really. But today someone is _overusing_ it. He stumbles over off the couch, presses the intercom button, and mumbles, “Yes?”

“ _Get down here, Natori_ ,” says a deep voice on the other end of the line. “ _I need a favor._ ”

“Who is this?”

“ _Is he coming?_ ” asks someone faintly. This voice sounds like it belongs to a young child. “ _Quiet,_ ” says the deep voice. “ _It’s Madara. Natsume’s missing._ ”

Shuuichi isn’t entirely sure who Madara is, and this could be a trap (certainly many exorcists must know by now of his connection to Natsume), but it doesn’t matter if Natsume really is missing. “I’ll be right down. I need to get some supplies.”

“ _Hurry!_ ” says the child’s voice.

That’s what puzzles him. He doesn’t know any small children. Could it be that a pair of youkai is looking for Natsume? Regardless, he rushes to gather his things: a large stack of paper dolls, ink, spare tags, and the materials to summon his shiki. He takes the stairs down two at a time, and skids out the door to find… Natsume’s cat and a little (probably human) girl.

“Are you… Madara?”

“Hmph,” says the cat. “Of course I am. Now stop wasting time and find him.”

Because he doesn’t consider it a waste of time to make absolutely sure children are safe, he turns his best smile on the girl and says, “What’s your name?” He’ll get around, in a little bit, to asking whether Madara kidnapped her or not, but first he needs to find out if she’s human.

“Ueda Minami,” she says, with a very intent and worried look on her face. “Is that important? When onii-chan is missing?”

“You don’t, uh… you don’t really look like—” His sentence ends in an undignified yelp, because the cat transforms into an enormous beast and picks him up in its jaws. To his relief, it then releases him onto its back. He’s glad that ayakashi don’t really drool.

“Just do that paper doll thing,” says Madara. “If you turn out to be useless I can always just eat you. Keep that in mind.”

Natsume’s cat isn’t at all likely to eat him; it seems strangely attached to the idea of not disappointing Natsume. But Shuuichi wants to find him just as much, so he quickly writes Natsume’s name on the leader of the paper dolls, tears it off, and releases it. Normally tracking would involve drawing a circle, but he managed to get some of Natsume’s blood to mix with his ink, for emergencies. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the blood of someone like Natsume makes everything he writes twice as powerful.

The doll shoots off into the sky, and Madara leaps after it. Shuuichi has never ridden on his back before, never really flown at all despite the length of his association with youkai. It would be exhilarating, incredible, if he were at all capable of putting Natsume out of his head for even a moment. Or the worry that little Ueda is going to fall off.

She doesn’t, though, and the paper doll leads them straight and true over the foothills and forests, to a compound Shuuichi has unfortunately seen before. “Matoba,” he says as they land.

“Looks like you were right, Minami,” says Madara. In a puff of smoke he turns back into a fat, ugly cat, and surveys the building in front of them. “You’ll have to come in with us. Probably has guards out here. What a pain.”

“So you’re Natsume’s sister?” Shuuichi asks. The little girl gives him a withering look. Not one he can charm, then. “You just don’t look much like him.”

“We’re both adopted,” she says, still glaring. “He’s my real brother. And _I’m_ gonna save him. You can help if you want.”

That explains _nothing_ , but clearly he’s not going to get more of an answer out of her. So he says, “I’ve been here before, so I can find my way around. I have a few ideas as to where Natsume might be.” Ueda _deigns_ to follow him, with the cat lying across her shoulders like a stole.

In the end, though, Shuuichi isn’t necessary. They just have to follow the sound of splintering wood and the cloud of thick blue smoke. As always Natsume is in the thick of it; they find him hunched against the remains of a wall, panting and clutching his burned left arm, half-hidden by an enormous unconscious youkai.

“Well done,” says Matoba’s voice from somewhere in the smoke. “This one will make an excellent servant.”

Natsume staggers to his feet and plants himself in front of the body. “I won’t allow you to do that. She only wanted to get home!”

Shuuichi heaves a sigh that thankfully cannot be heard over the continued clatter of falling wood, and walks over to stand by Natsume, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know the context, but by default I have to agree with Natsume. I don’t think you really want to take on both of us _and_ Natsume’s companion, but you’re welcome to try.”

Matoba gives him a look that could be anywhere between exasperated and murderous—they may just be the same emotion, to him—then shakes his head. “You really are all fools. When it wakes up, I don’t imagine you’ll want to be here.” And he turns on his heel and walks away.


	14. Chapter 14

It’s as if only spite against Matoba was keeping him on his feet. Suddenly exhausted, Takashi slumps to the ground again, wincing when he jostles his burned arm. “Natori-san,” he says, as his friend kneels down next to him. “What are you doing here?”

“Your bodyguard and your little sister came to get me. Seems they were rather worried about you.”

He takes a surprised breath, and starts coughing in the smoke. “Minami?” he manages.

She comes running toward him from around Jyuureki’s unconscious body, barely stopping in time to avoid crashing into him. She’s already crying. His heart sinks, because it’s entirely his fault she’s so upset. “Onii-chan!” she says, sniffling. “You’re hurt!”

He can’t do anything else, so he moves his injured arm and holds out the other one for a hug. She climbs into his lap and puts her arms tightly around him, like she’s afraid he’ll disappear. Again. Guiltily he brings up his good hand to stroke her hair, and looks around at Nyanko-sensei. Nyanko-sensei, in his manekineko form, just blinks mildly at him. He doesn’t even say anything like _you owe me a favor now!_

“Sorry for worrying everyone,” says Takashi. “I wasn’t…” He turns his eyes down to the blackness of Minami’s hair. “I didn’t even read his letter. I probably could have warned you if I had.”

“I don’t think you’re really at fault for being kidnapped by Matoba,” Natori murmurs. But Minami is—

“Just glad you’re safe,” she says indistinctly into Takashi’s shoulder. He can’t help but be charmed by her constant mumbling, even though it means he often has to ask her to repeat herself. It’s one of those Minami things.

 

Before they can go home, Takashi has to make sure Jyuureki leaves all right, and then get some ointment from Natori so his injuries won’t look too bad. Minami doesn’t let go of him the whole way home, and he has to take her aside outside the gate to ask her to act natural.

“Why?” she says. “Do I have to pretend I don’t like you?”

“You just have to pretend you weren’t scared for me,” he explains, crouched down by her. “We’re trying to look like we were just on a walk.”

It’s around dinner time, and neither of them even ate breakfast today (Takashi would have, but he doesn’t trust anything given to him by Matoba). Hunger is making Minami stubborn and prone to crying—even the mild frustration of having to act in front of Shigeru and Touko brings her to the verge of tears again, and her mouth works silently for almost a minute before she replies. “I’m… I’m tired from walking, onii-chan. We walked all day, to… to see all the cool places…” She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “…you wanted to show me. So, so, you have to carry me. Please.”

His heart softens, and he turns around to offer her his back. “You’re very brave, Minami. I hope you’ll never have to come and save me like that again.”

“But humans can’t do anything on their own,” says Nyanko-sensei from the top of the wall, as if finishing a quote. It’s something he’s said many times. “Now come on. We’re going to miss dinner. There’s shrimp today.”

“I don’t think you were ever at risk of missing dinner,” Takashi tells him. But he stands up and shifts Minami to a more comfortable position, and comes to the front door. “We’re home!” he calls.

“Takashi-kun! Minami-chan! I was so worried! Next time you leave a note, please remember to write when you’ll be coming back! Oh, my, Minami-chan, are you all right?”

“Sorry, Touko-san,” he says. “She’s just tired. We walked a lot today.”

Touko puts a hand up to her cheek, frowning at him. “Don’t tire her out, Takashi-kun. She doesn’t have the stamina you do!” She comes over to lift Minami off his back, and his sister does a very credible impression of someone just waking up. He’s not entirely sure she didn’t really fall asleep for a few minutes. “Minami-chan, how are you feeling? Well enough to eat dinner?”

“I’d love some dinner,” she says politely (if indistinctly), though Takashi knows she must be starving by now. It makes him a little sick to hear the contrast in how she speaks to him and to Touko. He feels like he has infected her with his distrust and secrecy. She shouldn’t have to live the way he does, even though she shares his secrets.

When they sit down at the table, Shigeru gives them a stern look over the tops of his glasses. But when he takes a bowl of rice from Touko he looks down and shakes his head, smiling. “Welcome home,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nyanko-sensei hasn’t even been home since last night—how does he know what they’re having for dinner? One, he watches the fridge very closely to deduce what food they are going to eat when. Two, he can smell it. He’s very invested in knowing which dinners he absolutely can’t miss. [Here’s a picture of Takashi and Minami.](http://imgur.com/bPhWTNk.png) Haha I couldn't decide on which of his canonical hair colors to use so I went halfway in between.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tanuma + taki fluff!

“Where’s onii-chan?” Minami asks. She’s not _that_ worried about him, he has Nyanko-sensei with him, but even in Yatsuhara she can’t totally stop worrying if she can’t see her brother. She shakes her hands off and wipes them on her dress, and looks up at Tanuma-san.

“I think he went to the well,” says Tanuma-san. “It must be an ayakashi thing, it’s not like we don’t have plumbing. How are the fish?”

“They’re fish, I guess.” Minami stands up and looks toward the back of the temple complex. “Maybe we should check on him.”

Tanuma-san makes an amused noise, and puts a marker in his book, and stands up too. “It’s nice that we finally have someone who can see ayakashi _and_ knows how many stupid situations Natsume gets himself into. Come on.” He offers her his hand. She thinks for a little bit before taking it, because she’s not a _baby_ but she still hasn’t gotten used to being able to touch other people. It’s a wonderful new thing and she’s going to do it as much as she can.

Takashi-onii-chan is sitting on the edge of the well with Nyanko-sensei, talking to someone down inside it. “I can ask,” he’s saying. “I’m not sure if they have the time to build something like that. Oh, Tanuma. This ayakashi is asking if you and your father would be willing to put a roof over the well so rain doesn’t get in.”

“But it’s a _well_ ,” says Tanuma-san. “Isn’t it already full of water?”

A voice comes from the well: “Rainwater has completely different spiritual energy than groundwater. Honestly, don’t humans know anything?”

Takashi-onii-chan repeats that to Tanuma-san, except more politely. He pauses at the end, like he almost repeated the last part too, and Minami giggles. “She said it like that, but ruder,” she tells Tanuma-san. Takashi-onii-chan gives her an exasperated look. “Sorry, onii-chan. Was that one of the things you’re supposed to lie about to protect people?”

“Aha!” says Tanuma-san. “You even tell her you’re teaching her to lie!”

“It’s an important skill!” she says, defending her brother.

“Hmm,” says Tanuma-san. “I just hope he’s teaching you when to tell the truth.”

Takashi-onii-chan looks away, into the well. He does that when he doesn’t want anyone to see whatever face he’s making. “I’ve relayed the message. Tanuma, you decide what to do from here. Good-bye, Izumige.”

 

Tooru-san comes later on. She’s the second best person Minami knows—well, no, the Fujiwaras have to come second and third, so she’s the fourth best—she always says hello by picking Minami up in a hug and spinning her around. “Minami-chan!” she says. “How’s my most beautiful girl!”

Minami giggles and puts her arms around Tooru-san’s neck. “I’m good! I played with the fish and now Tanuma-san is making hotpot!”

Tooru-san kisses her on the head before she puts her down. Maybe she’s tied for second place after all. “I hope I get some. I’ve been doing research all day, and it’s hard work. Where’s your big brother?”

“Helping in the kitchen. Nyanko-sensei is with them. Trying to make them drop food so he can eat it before it’s ready.”

“What a rascal,” says Tooru-san, offering her hand. “Let’s go surprise him so we can catch him in the act.”

Inside, Tooru-san jumps on Nyanko-sensei and hugs him even tighter than she hugged Minami. But mostly because he’s trying a lot harder to escape. Takashi-onii-chan turns around and laughs at them, and Minami just stands there for a little while so she can watch him laughing. Then Takashi-onii-chan looks at her and his smile changes into a different kind of smile, and he says, “Sit down, Minami. The hotpot is almost ready to eat.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember in the anime when takashi went to the festival with the fox kid and he was just the Perfect Brother. I couldn't resist.

Takashi-onii-chan is a _pretty_ good actor, but Minami can see right through him. She kind of thinks the Fujiwaras can too, but they’re pretending they can’t. They’re not very good liars, not like Minami and her brother, but for some reason he believes them anyway. Maybe he’s pretending to believe that they believe what he’s pretending? Trying to follow it makes her head spin.

But really what it means is she wants to tell them. “Why can’t we tell them?” she asks Takashi-onii-chan. She’s sitting in his room with Nyanko-sensei on her lap, humming because he doesn’t actually know how to purr.

Takashi-onii-chan looks up from his homework. He doesn’t even have to ask what she’s talking about. Maybe he thinks about it as much as she does. “It’s to protect them,” he says softly, and looks away again.

“Can you explain how? I’ve been trying to figure it out for months but I’m not as smart as you, onii-chan.”

“You’re very smart, Minami.” Maybe he’s lying to make her feel better. He does that all the time. Would he even lie to her? She’s pretty sure he would. “The reason is that I don’t want them to worry. They’d be terrified if they knew the kinds of things that happen to us.”

“Aren’t they already,” mutters Minami crossly.

Takashi-onii-chan’s head bows down as he looks back down at his homework. His hair falls across his face. “I’m… It’s hard,” he says, sounding just a little uncertain. “I don’t want you to have to lie to your own family.”

“But it’s fine when you do it…”

Nyanko-sensei sniggers in her lap, like he agrees with her, so she pets him under the chin as a reward. He hums louder and wiggles a little against her legs.

 

Takashi-onii-chan is still a really good big brother. He never gets embarrassed when she wants to hold his hand, and he’s the most patient person she’s ever met. At the autumn festival they go to he tries really hard to win prizes for her, and then glares at the ayakashi who helped him cheat. He takes her around to look at everything she wants to look at, and buys her whatever food she wants, and most of all he makes her feel safe. Even though the festival is full of ayakashi, and there’s a youkai sitting on the hillside that’s as big as a house. Takashi-onii-chan points him out and says, “He was here the last two years as well. He likes the fireworks.”

And he lets her sit sleepily in his lap and watch the fireworks from up on the hill, and nothing can hurt her while she’s in the circle of his arms. “Youkai are nice,” she says. “You should tell them.” He doesn’t tense, because even his body is really good at lying, but he does sigh quietly.

“Youkai aren’t nice. Not even most of them.”

“Would you get mad if _I_ told them?” Takashi-onii-chan almost never gets mad, only when something is threatening his family.

There’s a long silence. Distantly the fireworks go _bang, bang poppoppoppoppop_. Like huge bright flowers in the sky. “I don’t know,” says Takashi-onii-chan. “I’m not really sure any more.”

“I’ll make one last lie about it. A big pretty one. The big youkai let us sit on his shoulders and said, aren’t the fireworks so beautiful? Thanks for bringing me to see them. I owe you now.”

“You don’t need to,” says Takashi-onii-chan, really quietly. “You don’t need to lie in order to tell the truth.”

“Seems like _you_ do,” she mumbles, but she makes sure not to say it too loud or too clearly, because she doesn’t really want him to hear. She’s not sure whether he did, because he just starts petting her hair without saying anything. She snuggles down further into his lap and finally stops trying to keep her eyes open.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I legitimately made myself cry while writing this chapter. Here Takashi has the subtlety of a shy forest creature with invisibility powers, and Minami has the subtlety of a rubber mallet.

Touko has a keen sense of when her children are up to something, even better than her husband’s. Having Takashi long ago stopped feeling like one of the mystery novels she used to love (she would always solve them halfway through, while Shigeru was still scratching his head) and started feeling like something that was just _true_. He’s an odd boy, but even kinder for it. No animal is too small for him to care for: even when Touko asks him to take care of a spider or cockroach he’ll gently cup it in his hands and take it outside. Since Minami came, the air of a mystery novel has returned.

Touko doesn’t mind, _really_ , but occasionally she finds herself wondering how unobservant they think she is. It’s a bad thing to think, about them and about herself, but Takashi stubbornly seems to believe he is fooling her.

Today is different, but it starts out the same.

“Aren’t the flowers beautiful, Touko-san?” Takashi asks.

She follows his gaze to the air a few meters above a tree stump that looks like it was struck by lightning. Oh, dear. She’s never sure any more how hard to pretend—she hates to lie to him, but she knows how hard he’s trying to pretend to be… well, normal. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that trees don’t flower in November. Perhaps for him they do.

“I can’t see them, Takashi-kun, but I know they are. I can see it on your face.”

His smile disappears and something shutters behind his eyes, as it so often does. Then he blinks slowly and says, “I… wish you could see them.”

Touko’s eyes widen, because she can tell that a decision, an important one, was just made. A line has been crossed. He hasn’t denied that he sees something she can’t. He hasn’t said the phrase that she has come to dislike so much: _it’s nothing_. “Maybe you should learn to paint, Takashi-kun,” she says, smiling, and starts walking again. “Then you can show me.”

 

Perhaps a week after that, Takashi and Minami come home from one of their walks with matching cuts on the backs of their hands. Touko clicks her tongue and says, “Sit down and let me look at those. They might get infected! The way the two of you are always in the woods.” She frowns down at Minami’s hand. The cut is very long and straight, and so deep it might have been made by a knife. “How did you get this, Minami-chan?”

Minami glances at Takashi, like she’s asking for permission or guidance. Ah. One of those sorts of things. Touko expects her to say something like _we were climbing trees_ , but instead—

“A sickle weasel was mad at us,” Minami says gravely. “It tried to put a blood curse on us, but onii-chan figured out it was just missing its mate, and we helped find it, and they were so grateful they gave us lucky charms.” She holds up what looks like a rock with a cross shape cut into it.

Touko blinks at her, lost for words.

“That was too much detail,” Takashi mutters. “We were trying to ease her into it, not scare her.” He looks up at Touko, apprehensively, from under the hair that’s always falling into his eyes. If she has ever heard an unbelievable story in her life, this is one.

Takashi still sometimes cries out _I’m not a liar!_ in his sleep. He has seen the ghost of a crow, and flowers blooming on rocks, and a hundred other unbelievable things.

Touko swallows, and tries not to sound _too_ worried, because if the story is true her children could very well have been killed. But they weren’t. “I don’t suppose I know best, but I hope at least you’re taking precautions.” She dabs a bit of ointment on Minami’s cut, carefully not looking anywhere else. “Protective charms and enchantments, that sort of thing. Those _do_ work, don’t they?”

She glances up at Takashi when she hears his breath hitch. Under his long fringe of hair, tears are welling in his eyes. “They do,” he says softly. She holds out her hand, and he lays his own in it.

“Well, then,” she says as she starts to clean his cut. “I hope you don’t plan to go on any more adventures until you find some. You’ll make me worry.”

Minami manages to hold herself back precisely until Touko finishes with Takashi’s hand, and then throws herself at her. “I told you, onii-chan! I told you she’d understand! You’re the best mom ever, Touko-san!”

Touko wraps her arms around Minami, feeling a little tearful herself. The best mom ever. How about that?

“Takashi-kun, you’d better come here too,” says Touko, and holds out the arm that’s not already wrapped around Minami. Takashi sniffs, tries to wipe his eyes on his shoulder, and comes over.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On wikipedia it says Madara is an inugami, but he never admits to anything of the sort. What is the truth??

Onii-chan is _really_ good at painting. The Fujiwaras are probably going to be even more impressed, because they didn’t see as many of the first paintings he did when he wasn’t good yet. He still looks really embarrassed, offering the picture to Shigeru-san.

Shigeru-san says, “What’s this?” and starts unwrapping it, already smiling like he knows he’s going to love it, whatever it is. “Oh! Takashi-kun, this is excellent. An inugami, isn’t it?”

Takashi-onii-chan blinks a couple times, which means he’s confused. “I don’t think so. It’s Nyanko-sensei.”

All four of them turn to look at Nyanko-sensei, who is sitting on his cushion on the side table. He pretends he just barely noticed them and says, “Hm? Oh, Natsume, you painted a picture of me! Good, now everyone will know how noble I look. I see you’ve included yourself. How narcissistic.”

“I’m in it too,” says Minami, pointing.

“Well!” says Touko-san. “So that’s Nyankichi! Takashi-kun, do you mind if I have it framed?”

Takashi-onii-chan turns away so she won’t see him blushing (but Minami is right next to him, so _she_ sees), and he says, “I don’t mind.”

A week later the picture is back, in a thin black frame. Touko-san hangs it up in the dining room and asks Tooru-san to make some pretty ofuda to go on the sides. It looks kind of weirdly shrine-y, but Nyanko-sensei keeps looking at it while he pretends to be napping in Shigeru-san’s chair, so Minami thinks he likes it.

Touko-san is really good at finding places for talismans and protective tags that make them look like decorations, and every time Tooru-san comes over and sees one she smiles really big. She even looked in her grandfather’s notes (and Takashi-onii-chan asked Natori) to find some good ways to put up barriers around the house. Now whenever an ayakashi wants its name back it has to yell for Takashi-onii-chan outside his window. He keeps saying he should install a bell system so they don’t wake up Minami, but he never does. Probably he likes it better than when they would just climb in his window while he was sleeping.

 

The first time Minami brings someone from school home to play, she has a little bit of a hard time going in the front gate. It’s weird. Minami squints at Fujiko-chan, trying to figure out why, but then Fujiko-chan says, “Ahh, your house is really nice, Minami-chan. It has kind of a sunny feeling. Even my back hurts less!” She laughs. “Don’t I sound like an old lady?”

“ _My_ house is magic,” says Minami. “Like hot springs,” she adds quickly. “Like when you just walk into the building you feel better, even when you haven’t gone in the water yet! C’mon, Touko-san will give us tea and daifuku.”

“Your mom’s the best!” says Fujiko-chan. “My mom _never_ has daifuku when I invite someone over.”

Touko-san isn’t her mom, but she _is_ the best, so Minami smiles and lets it be. “I’m home!” she calls, pushing open the front door. “I brought a friend!”

“Welcome back!” calls Touko-san from the kitchen. “I hope you’ll introduce us!”

Fujiko-chan is looking around. “Is your family really religious?” she asks.

It’s what Shigeru-san said to say if anyone asks, so Minami nods. “Kinda. Mostly we like the decorations. Touko-san, this is my friend Fujiko. Fujiko-chan, this is Touko-san.”

Touko-san smiles really big and says, “Hello, Fujiko-chan! Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you some tea? I might still have some sweets somewhere…”

Minami smiles at Fujiko-chan. Fujiko-chan smiles back. Minami almost sits on Nyanko-sensei, and as an apology she pets him instead. “Wow, your cat is really ugly,” says Fujiko-chan in an admiring voice. “Can I pet him?”

“He likes when you pet him under the chin,” Minami tells her. Nyanko-sensei opens one eye just a little, and she winks at him.

About an hour later Takashi-onii-chan comes home, while Minami and Fujiko-chan are talking about the ending of a book they just finished. He looks into the kitchen and sees them and smiles his Special Big Brother Smile. “I’m back,” he says softly, again.  “You must be Minami’s friend.”

Fujiko-chan is staring at him, so Minami introduces her. Takashi-onii-chan smiles, and Minami gives him the last one of her daifuku she was saving for when he got home. “Thanks, Minami,” he says. She feels a little bit like she’s going to explode from smiling so much. “Oh, hello, Sensei. I’m going to my room. You can come ask me if you need anything.”

“Sure!”

After he leaves Fujiko-chan says, “Your brother is really… cool…” She’s blushing, for some reason. Well, yeah, Takashi-onii-chan really is _that_ cool.

“He’s the _best_ ,” says Minami. “He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only nice thing I’ve ever written, the sweetest and goodest… thanks everyone for your kind words… good night


End file.
